Hi everyone,

I was recently asked to contribute to a book about New Jersey monsters/creatures, and I was asked by the authors if I had any information about the Lake Hopatcong Monster and the Lizard Man of Great Meadows. There’s not a heck of a lot of information out there about these creatures and I was wondering if any of my readers and fellow New Jerseyans had heard of anything about these cryptids or perhaps had a first- or second-hand account of an encounter or a sighting.

If anyone would like to share their experiences, please feel free to comment on this blog post or email me at john@theparanomalist.com. It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

John

Even for those who are skeptical about the existence of an upright-walking ape or hominid, or other species of undiscovered animal, the idea that such mysterious creatures could inhabit the remote areas of the globe shouldn’t be that much of a stretch of the imagination. There are still vast regions of sparsely populated and densely forested land on this earth, and to consider the likelihood of undiscovered species of animals inhabiting such areas — even a fairly large creature such as sasquatch — is something that cannot be completely discounted except by the most close-minded of individuals.

Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film capture

I find the subject of cryptozoology, as a whole, fascinating, but I’ve always been particularly intrigued by reports of cryptids, mystery creatures, and out-of-place animals in more populated areas of the world. I wrote about one such experience had by my wife while accompanying her students at their annual seventh-grade class outing, in Stokes State Forest in northwestern NJ. While not a face-to-face bigfoot encounter, my wife did hear bloodcurdling screams and yowls late one night, and when she inquired about them to a local police officer, she was told in a very serious tone that there had been numerous reports of bigfoot sightings in the area and that these screams that she’d described were associated with them.

This occurred a few years ago, and at the time I’d honestly never heard of bigfoot sightings here in my home state of New Jersey. However, I was raised and live in the highly populated northeastern part of the NJ, only a few miles outside of New York City, so the idea of a Garden State Sasquatch seemed, frankly, preposterous. However, upon further research I learned that bigfoot sightings and encounters had been happening for many years in the rural, northwestern part of the state known as the Highlands, as well as in the New Jersey Pine Barrens (not just a place for mafiosa to bury their victims, you know). These Bigfoot sightings were commonplace enough to have earned the creature the name Big Red Eye, because of the fact that most reports describe the entity as having glowing red eyes.

Highlands, New Jersey has the highest elevation along the entire eastern seaboard, from Maine to Florida. It is a ruggedly beautiful part of the state, and having camped there many times, I can tell you that it is quite thickly wooded. Nevertheless, I still had (have) difficulty in accepting the possibility of a large hominid living in the state with highest population per square mile. To my mind, bigfoot — if it exists — is a creature that inhabits the remote mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and the Canadian Rockies, and would certainly not inhabit even the most wooded areas of NJ, or anyplace along the eastern seaboard of the USA, for that matter. However, I’m not a wildlife biologist or an expert in any such matters, so I imagine that it may be feasible that a large, unclassified species of animal could inhabit the more remote areas of even a very populated section of our country. That’s a question that would best be posed to someone with the credentials to give a more authoritative answer than I, however.

Photo of a large, panther-like cat taken in England

Still, reports of strange creatures sighted in highly populated suburban and urban areas continue to pour in unabated from developed nations across the globe. Should we dismiss them all as hoaxes or misidentifications? Let’s consider for a moment a creature less exotic, perhaps, than sasquatch: big cats.

Alien Big Cats (ABCs)

Sightings of big cats in areas where they have thought to be long extinct have been going on for at least the past decade and seem to be on the rise, particularly in Britain, and more recently in the USA. Big cat sightings in Britain have become so commonplace as to earn them the name ABCs, an acronym for Alien Big Cats — alien, I presume to mean “not native to Britain”, and not implying that their origins are otherworldly.

These British cats are typically described as being large and panther-like with glossy, almost “oil-slick black” coats, and at least the size of medium-large to large dogs. These beasts have been spotted not only on the British Isles, but throughout western Europe in countries such as France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Spain. The photo above right was taken of the so-called Beast of Bodmin, one of several large cats seen in the area of Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, UK. This a rugged, rural area of Britain, but it does not encompass a particularly large area, geographically.

The Liger - Artist's rendering by N. Dynamite

Big cats have been sighted throughout rural England by many reliable witnesses, and any population that may exist of these felines have generally been attributed to wild animal collectors having released their pets into the woods and fields of the English countryside.

Many of these creatures were probably released in and after 1976, when the Dangerous Wild Animals Act was instituted in the UK, making the unlicensed keeping of certain types of wild animals a criminal offense.

The big cats seen in the U.S. are most likely animals that were once native to the area that have expanded their territories. Jaguars, once native to the U.S., are being spotted once again in the southwestern states, presumably having migrated north from Mexico.

There have also been numerous but unconfirmed reports of large puma-like cats in the woods and mountains of upstate New York, primarily in the Adirondack region. To a lesser extent, reports of some type of mountain lion/puma have also come from further south in NY state, in the region of the Catskill Mountains. The Eastern Puma is thought to have been entirely killed off or driven out of the New York and the northeastern states more than a century ago, prior to the 1900’s.

With more stringent wildlife protection laws now in place, the idea of animals once thought to be extinct having maintained a small breeding population and making a return to their original habitat is no longer unworthy of consideration. However, what do we make of sightings of more bizarre creatures, such as the purported Bigfoot sightings in populated areas of the world, such as New Jersey and the other eastern states? Can they all be attributed to outright lies or the misidentification of known fauna?

Flying monsters and big birds

Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters

In 2008, while co-hosting the old Paranomalists podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard, author of the excellent Big Bird! Modern Sightings of Flying Monsters. In it, Mr. Gerhard describes a series of reports that took place in 1970s Texas of a pterosaur-type creature that had been seen by numerous witnesses. This winged beast was described as very definitely not having feathers, but rather leathery wings, as well as a crested head, and a long, serpentine tail ending in a diamond shape. Very pterosaur-like indeed, and not a description that fits any known type of bird.

There have been numerous other incidents concerning huge birds or flying creatures, notably in the midwest, and particularly in central Illinois. Most famously, there was purportedly an attack on a boy in November of 1977 by two gigantic birds. The victim, nine year Marlon Lowe, was playing in his backyard in Lawndale, Illinois when two huge, vulture-like birds swooped down upon him. One grabbed him in its talons and proceeded to carry the boy off the ground and into the air for several feet, in plain sight of the boy’s mother and several other witnesses. Struggling and thrashing to save himself, Marlon was released and fell to ground, unharmed (physically, at least).

Can the teratorn, a huge species of raptor that supposedly went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, still be in existence? Is this what attacked young Marlon Lowe? There were a number of subspecies of teratorn, the largest of which was Argentavis magnificens, a massive bird that weighed in between 158 to 172 lbs (72 – 78 kg) and had a wingspan of 21 to 24 feet (6.5 – 7.5 meters). Argentavis magnificens occupied modern-day Argentina from the Miocene Era to the Pleistocene, and became extinct along with the other species of teratorns, about 10,000 years ago. Are memories of these massive birds what the Native Americans refer to in their legends of the Thunderbird? And is there any way such creatures could survive, undiscovered, into the modern era?

Moving again to the more bizarre end of the spectrum, what are we to make of the reports of the most famous of flying, bird-like entities: Mothman? Here we have another well-documented case of a strange, flying creature — which, interestingly, shares a commonality with the NJ Bigfoot, in that it is described as having glowing red eyes — being seen by multiple, reliable witnesses. The residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia claimed to have seen this man-sized, winged creature in and around the area from November 1966 to December 1967. Were the people who reported this delusional? Was it possibly a form of mass-hysteria? Or was this a creature that was an existing, legitimate species of bird that was being mistaken for something more unearthly or sinister?

Ken Gerhard tells us in Big Bird! that several leading cryptozoologists, including Bernard Heuvelmans, Ivan Sanderson, Mark Hall and Loren Coleman, believe that some of these sightings may be attributed to an undiscovered species of giant bat. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that such a species exists. Another explanation for some big bird and mothman-type sighting could be the misidentification of North American Great Horned Owls, which can attain wingspans of five feet. Loren Coleman confirmed to Ken Gerhard that he believes that these exceptionally large owls may account for some of the reports of West Virginia’s Mothman. Yet, in the case of the Mothman sightings, the entity was consistently described as being upright and standing between six and seven feet tall. Again, a simple mistake or trick of the mind by the witnesses, or perhaps an intentional lie? Or were the citizens of Point Pleasant bearing witness to something unearthly?

Other possible explanations…

What possible explanations can there be for the numerous reports of mystery animals that are seen in the more populated regions of the many industrialized nations of the western world? Hoaxes? Misidentifying existing animal species? Or are there other answers? We’ll explore these questions in Part Two of Cryptids in Suburbia (online this week, so check back or subscribe to our RSS feed on the upper right of the page). Thanks for reading!

Photo of a Ghostly image

My cousin’s best friend of some 35 years, Tina, is a gifted medium. I’ve met her many times over the years, but until recently I hadn’t heard about her psychic abilities. However, when my cousin learned of my interest in the paranormal, she told me that I “had to talk with Tina”. My cousin assured me that she wouldn’t mind discussing some of her experiences, so naturally that wasn’t an opportunity that I could pass on, and I followed up with her. We chatted for a while and she told me of many of her strange experiences. Tina, you see, is sometimes visited by the spirits of the departed. One of her accounts was particularly interesting to me, and I’ll recount it here.

Tina is an attractive career woman with a wonderful personality, but has never married, choosing instead to remain single. A few years ago she had begun dating a gentleman named Dave that she’d met through a friend. They hit it off at their first meeting and had gone on several dates together. The relationship, although still in it’s early stages, was going well, and one night they had made plans to go out to dinner. Dave’s car was being repaired, so Tina offered to stop by his home to pick him up. She arrived at Dave’s home and standing on his front porch, Tina rang the doorbell. A moment later, Dave answered breathlessly, buttoning his shirt and apologizing for not being ready.

“No problem!” replied Tina, as Dave ushered her into his living room. Tina took a seat on the sofa and Dave went upstairs to put on his shoes and tie, promising to be downstairs and ready to leave in a few minutes. A few moments after Tina was seated and Dave walked upstairs, a man suddenly appeared next her on the sofa. He was neatly dressed and appeared to be in his mid-sixties, with a thinning gray hair and a kindly face. Tina would have been startled out of her wits if this was the first time such an experience had occurred; however, Tina had been through this before.

“Hello”, said the older man. As she looked at him Tina immediately saw an undeniable resemblance to her boyfriend Dave, and the relationship was confirmed when the man introduced himself as “Dave, Senior — David’s father”.

“What do you want?” asked Tina, reasonably enough.

“I want you to give my son a message for me, please”, said Dave Senior. “I’d like you to tell him that I’m very, very sorry for not believing what he told me about my brother, his uncle, when he was ten years old. Tell him that I now know that what he told me was true, and that I’m so sorry for not listening to him or believing him. Please tell him this for me.”

With that, the older man vanished from his place on the sofa next to Tina. Although this sort of thing didn’t happen every day to Tina, she had experienced these “visits” often enough before, and managed to stay relatively calm and collected. What, however, would she tell her new boyfriend? Would he think her utterly insane, or at best, some kind of weirdo, if she were to tell him what had just transpired and of his dead father’s message? Would telling him effectively end their burgeoning relationship?

These are the questions that raced through Tina’s mind, but as she heard Dave’s footsteps on the stairs she knew what she had to do. She felt a sudden responsibility to the older man, this apparition, that just visited her. Tina made up her mind to tell Dave what had happened, regardless of the consequences and how it might affect their relationship.

Dave entered the living room, straightening his tie. “Ready to go?” he said.

As Tina stood up, he could immediately see that something was the matter. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Dave asked.

“Dave, this is going to sound very strange, I know. But a man was just here and he said his name was Dave Senior, and that he was your father.”

“What? What are you talking about?” asked Dave. “My dad died two years ago.”

“I know.” replied Tina. “He told me that he had a message that he wanted to give you — something he wanted to tell you.”

“Are you serious, Tina? Because this isn’t funny!”, replied Dave hotly. He was beginning to feel upset and more than a little freaked out.

“Dave, this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened to me. I know it’s very strange, and I don’t usually bring it up to people unless I know them very well, but I sometimes get visits from…the departed.”

“This is very weird, Tina.”, said Dave.

“Yes, I know. But the man who visited me looked just like an older version of you, and he said his name was Dave Senior.”, Tina replied.

“Okay, well, my dad’s name was also David….” said Dave, calming down a little. “So what did he have to say to you? What was this message that he had for me?”

“Well…”, said Tina, “he wanted me to tell you that he’s very, very sorry that he didn’t believe you… about what you told him when you were ten.”

Dave’s face suddenly blanched. “What?” he whispered. “What did I tell him when I was ten?”

“About your uncle, Dave. Your father’s brother. He wanted me to tell you that he was sorry that he didn’t believe you when you told him about your uncle, but that he knows now that you were telling him the truth. That’s all he said…”, she trailed off.

“My God.”, said Dave, sitting down. “When I was ten years old, Tina, my uncle sexually molested me. My father’s brother. I went to my dad and told him, but he became very angry and upset, and told me that I was lying, and that I was to never repeat this to anyone. And I never did. My dad is the only one that I ever told about my uncle molesting me.” With that, Dave put his face in his hands and began to sob.

Tina sat on the sofa next to Dave and cradled him in her arms as he wept. Years of sorrow and shame seemed to be pouring from him, and he cried the long, bitter tears of a wounded child.

“It’s okay, Dave.”, Tina soothed. “He’s sorry for not believing you. Your dad wants your forgiveness. Forgive him, and put this to rest… and let your dad rest.”

“Okay”, said Dave, composing himself a little and wiping the tears from his eyes. “Alright, I’ll try. This is just a lot to take in… a lot to absorb. But okay. Let’s go get some dinner.”

Tina and Dave left, discussing the incident no further that evening. After some period of time passed, Dave thanked Tina. It was an open wound that Dave had been carrying for close to 40 years, and now he was finally able to begin the process of healing this wound. Tina and Dave are no longer dating, but they’ve remained close friends. Tina has had numerous other similar experiences since then and continues to receive ghostly visits and messages from the other side.

Whether this is a gift or curse a subjective matter, of course, but Tina believes that it’s the former. “If I hadn’t been able to communicate with the spirits of the dead”, she told me, “then Dave would have carried this pain for the rest of his life. The good that sometimes comes of this ‘gift’, or whatever you call it, makes it tolerable.”

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Hunt for the Skinwalker

Hunt for the Skinwalker

Hunt for the Skinwalker, by molecular biologist Colm Kelleher and investigative journalist George Knapp, is the true account of a remarkable and disturbing series of events that visited the “Gorman” family at their 480-acre ranch in northeastern Utah, beginning in the fall of 1994. The first chapter finds Tom and Ellen Gorman, their son and daughter, and Tom’s father, Ed, newly arrived at their recently-purchased ranch.

As the Gormans stood on their property unloading some items from their truck, they saw an unusually large wolf approaching them from across a field. The creature appeared to be completely unconcerned with the Gorman’s presence, and in fact, seemed determined to make contact with them. As the animal approached it was apparent that it was indeed a wolf of tremendous size, standing chest high to the six foot-plus Tom Gorman and weighing an estimated 200 pounds.

As intimidating as the beast’s size was, it appeared to be quite docile as the Gormans petted it and stroked its fur, leading them to believe that it might have been someone’s pet. However, the huge wolf made a sudden bound toward the pen containing the Gorman’s prized Angus cattle and grabbed one of the calves by the muzzle and began to pull the bleating animal through the posts of the split-rail fence. With a curse, Tom Gorman sprang to action and running over to the animal, began kicking it in the ribcage with all his strength. The huge wolf seemed unperturbed and did not relinquish its grip on the calf, even as Ed Gorman began beating the creating across the back with a baseball bat. Tom then called to his son to retrieve his .357 Magnum handgun and proceeded to pump three rounds into the massive beast’s chest and abdomen from point-blank range.

The huge wolf neither bled, flinched, or even yelped, and only after the third shot did it release the calf and slowly backed away. Both astonished and disturbed, Tom then took his thirty aught six rifle from his truck and again shot the animal and close range. This time, the only reaction that the creature gave was to again slowly back away a few paces as it continued to gaze at the Gorman family. Only after another few minutes did the gigantic wolf casually trot off across the field. Tom and his teenage son, Tad, gave pursuit, and guns in hand, followed the wolf into a grove of trees at the far end of the field. They were close behind it and following a clear set of tracks that were deeply embedded in the soft ground, when the wolf’s paw prints suddenly vanished. The clear trail of prints simply disappeared, as if the animal evaporated into thin air. Frightened and confused, Tom and Tad returned back to the ranch, at a loss to explain these strange events. It was later learned that the last known wolf in Utah had been shot in 1929.

This is how Hunt for the Skinwalker begins, and the incident with the huge wolf (not the last) would prove to be only the first of an ongoing and frightening series of events of high strangeness that eventually caught the attention of the National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS). NIDS is a research organization that was founded and privately funded by real estate and aerospace magnate Robert Bigelow for the purpose of applying rigorous scientific study of anomalies. Employing highly qualified and experienced scientists and a world-class review board, NIDS was headed by molecular biologist Colm Kelleher, PhD., the organization’s Deputy Administrator.

The Gorman family, however, lived at their Utah ranch for two years before the NIDS team set up a research station and began their long study of the events taking place therein. After the encounter with the wolf, the Gorman’s experiences continued, first with trickster-like phenomena involving missing kitchen utensils, tools, and other items around the household and property and increased in intensity and strangeness as time went on. Strange, poltergeist-type phenomena continued in and around their home, and soon they began seeing floating globes of light, seemingly under intelligent control. Some flying objects seen over their property were rectangular refrigerator-like objects similar to the “chupas” reported in Brazil and discussed by Jacque Vallee in his excellent book Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact. Other bizarre phenomena included:

• Visits by a semi-visible, “Predator”-like creature that struck terror in the Gorman’s cattle
• Otherworldly orange structures that would hover above the trees and change shape
• Sightings of UFOs of various sizes and shapes, from glowing orbs to box-like rectangular craft
• A distinctly blue, day-lit sky seen at night through a tear or rent in the night sky — perhaps a glimpse into another world or time?
• Mysterious disappearances and relocation of their prized Angus and Simmental cattle
• Bizarre cattle mutilations, seemingly performed with surgical precision
• A 3-D tunnel that opened up, out of which climbed a large, black bigfoot type of creature
• A huge, three-toed dinosaur-like foot print and other strange prints on the property
• The apparent incineration of three of the family’s dogs by a floating blue orb

It was the baiting and subsequent killing of the Gorman family’s faithful cattle dogs by the glowing blue orb that was the final straw. After almost two years of being terrorized by these ongoing phenomena, the Gormans were mentally and emotionally exhausted, as well as being nearly financially ruined by the frequent disappearance and mutilation of their prized cattle. It was also at about this time that news of the bizarre events at the Utah ranch made the national press, catching the attention of billionaire hotel and aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, founder of the National Institute of Discovery Science.

Shortly after the initial inspection and investigation of the property, an offer was made by NIDS to purchase the ranch from the Gormans. The Gormans accepted the offer in August 1996, and Tom Gorman was hired to stay on as the ranch manager. The NIDS team of scientists then set up camp on the property. Between August 1996 and February 1997 there was little activity, as if whatever intelligence was governing these events was unwilling to reveal itself to the newcomers. However, in March 1997 a new series of bizarre and startling events began, including the appearance of an invisible beast that terrorized the cattle and sent the NIDS team’s magnetometer readings spiking. These events that began in March 1997 continued from that point through the summer of 1997, and was the most intense and frequent period of activity during the NIDS team’s tenure at the ranch. By 1999 the activity had lessened to the point that only a couple of scientists were posted on the ranch, and by 2004, when Colm Kelleher had left NIDS, it was several years since any significant activity had occurred — although it is reported that strange phenomena still take place at the property.

Without recounting all of the many events of the book, Hunt for the Skinwalker is a story that is unique for the fact that it was studied for several years with scrupulous scientific rigor by a highly qualified and dispassionate team of scientists. The NIDS team were equipped with an array of night vision surveillance cameras, magnetometers, spectrometers, and other audio, video, and forensic analysis equipment, and gathered a very compelling body of physical evidence of the various phenomena that visited the ranch. Remarkable too, is the fact that such a great variety of type of phenomena occurred, running the gamut from poltergeist activity, sightings of anomalous creatures and bigfoot-like beings, UFO sightings, and more. Also of note was the interactive, “trickster” nature of these experiences with the Gorman family and the NIDS team, giving support to the notion that these events were under intelligent design, and not random phenomena.

We would be remiss if we did not mention that this particular tract of land where the ranch is located has had a long tradition among the native Ute tribe as being cursed, and in “in the path of the Skinwalker”. The Skinwalker, according to the lore of the Navajo people, is a witch or sorcerer, capable of shape-shifting, summoning demons, and casting evil spells. Because of the numerous witnesses to the phenomena in and around this ranch, the documentation of the NIDS scientists, and the Native American beliefs concerning the area, this makes for a very compelling account of high strangeness and the paranormal. I encourage anyone interested in these areas to read this fascinating book, published by Paraview Press.

For those who are interested in learning more, listen to George Noory’s interview with George Knapp and Colm Kelleher on Coast to Coast AM. Here is part one of eleven:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also of interest: http://prairiespecters.blogspot.com/2009/02/skinwalkers.html

Famous "Brown Lady" Ghost Photo

Okay, folks. for my very first post I’m going to tell one of my favorite ghostly tales. I found this particular account especially compelling because it happened to good friend of my parents. Here it goes:

Because of my father’s job (he was a salesman for a large paper company) our family moved several times, starting out in Brooklyn, NY and living at various times through the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s in Baltimore MD, Long Island NY, Wellesley Massachusetts, and New Jersey (where I grew up).

While living in Baltimore from 1952 – 1961, before I was born, my parents had a good friend named Ruth. Ruth had a young daughter of 5 or 6 years old, around my brother’s and sister’s age. One day, Ruth came home from her part-time job to pick up her daughter from school and found that all of her husband’s possessions were missing and his luggage was gone. The poor woman was obviously stunned and very upset, to say the least. She and her husband, Jim, were having some marital problems, but she did not expect him to leave without any notice or even a note. As it turned out, she never saw Jim again. He had packed up and left, and never again attempted to contact his wife or daughter.

Ruth was not only distraught over the sudden dissolution of her marriage, but she was also in a difficult financial predicament. Without Jim’s income, she and her daughter could no longer afford to stay in the comfortable brownstone apartment that had been their home. It was at this time that one of her closest friends, Grace, offered to have Ruth and her daughter move in to her apartment, which was located in the same Baltimore neighborhood in which Ruth and her daughter were living. Grace was single, and her roommate had just moved out, so she had the space for both Ruth and her daughter to move in. Grace was a career woman and made a comfortable living, so she generously told Ruth not to worry about paying her any rent until she was on her feet and had found a better job.

Many years passed, and Ruth and Grace continued to live together. Ruth never did remarry and her daughter grew to adulthood, eventually marrying and moving out of Aunt Grace’s and her mom’s apartment. Now some forty years later, in the mid-1990’s, Grace and Ruth were both about seventy years of age, and Grace’s health was failing. She had cancer and knew that her time was limited. One day, while sitting in their kitchen, drinking tea and chatting, Grace turned suddenly very serious. A devout Catholic and a deeply religious woman, Grace turned to Ruth and said, “Would it be alright if I contacted you after I die?” Ruth was not especially religious and uncomfortable with such topics, and replied with a laugh, “Fine, but make sure it’s not just some little tap on the wall at night. I want to know it’s really you.” Grace then promised her that she would make it clear that it was she who was contacting her from beyond.

The following month, Grace’s health took a turn for the worse and she passed away in the hospital. Naturally, Ruth was deeply saddened at the passing of her closest friend. One afternoon, several days after Grace’s funeral, Ruth sat alone at the kitchen table, sipping some tea and thinking of her friend. As Ruth sat there, something caught her attention: She noticed Grace’s rosary beads, which hung on a nearby wall, begin to swing back-and-forth in a pendulum-like manner – despite the fact that the windows were closed and there was no breeze or draft in the room. She thought it odd, but didn’t become too concerned over it, when she was suddenly seized by an overwhelming feeling, as if someone had taken control of her entire body. Ruth then grabbed a pen and a note pad, and began to scrawl some words across the paper.

Just as quickly as it had happened, the episode passed leaving Ruth very shaken and upset. She immediately called her daughter and attempted to explain what she had just experienced. Concerned for her mother, Ruth’s daughter promised to drive to her apartment right away to check up on her. Ruth then sat down again at the kitchen table to wait for her and try to regain her composure, when she noticed the note pad. She looked at it and saw that she had scrawled a phone number with an area code that she did not recognize. Intuitively, she felt that she had to call that number and somehow “knew” who’s number it was. “Hello”, came a familiar, but long unheard voice. “Is this Jim?”, Ruth asked. “Why yes, it is. Who is this?”, replied the voice. Ruth’s intuition was confirmed: it was Jim, her former husband that she had not seen in over forty years.

Ruth quickly hung up without saying anything further. It was at that moment that she knew that Grace had indeed contacted her from the beyond. When her daughter arrived a few minutes later, Ruth tearfully told her what had happened. Although skeptical, Ruth’s daughter could not help but be intrigued by the strange occurrence that visited her mother, so she decided to consult an acquaintance at work whom she had heard was a psychic. Without giving him too many specifics, she described to the psychic what her mother had experienced, and he agreed to meet with them at Ruth’s apartment. Sensing a “presence”, as he described it, the psychic agreed to return for a full seance.

Ruth, her daughter, the psychic and two other of Ruth’s and Grace’s good friends sat around Ruth’s kitchen table, with the lights dimmed and a few candles burning. The psychic was quiet for some time, but then, speaking quietly with his eyes shut, said “I’m speaking with a woman, and she says her name is ‘Grace’, and she’s laughing. She wants me to ask Ruth if this is better than a tap on the wall…”

This story was related to my mother and father by their good friend Ruth (last name withheld), with whom they’ve kept in touch over fifty years. A close friend of my parents and a long time federal government employee, Ruth is a good, stable, sane person and I’m therfore quite hesitant to dismiss this story as fiction. Tell me what you think. I would love to hear any similar stories that you might have.

Popular image of the Gnome

My paternal grandmother was born in a rural area of Sweden in 1891, and when I was a boy she told me stories of the Tomtar,  small beings that took the appearance of old, bearded men. Tomtar were no more than 3 feet tall and wore pointed hats, which we’ve of course come to associate with gnomes and similar creatures. Legend tells that Tomtar were capable of invisibility and could shapeshift, sometimes taking the appearance of a large, grown man.

Also, according to legend — and Grandma Alice’s stories — Tomtar would usually be found on a farm and would carry out chores at night and help care for the farmer’s animals. It was thought to be bad luck to see one, but my grandmother claimed that she would often find his small footprints in the snow or mud around her home.

Although basically a benevolent spirit, Tomtarna were easily offended and could be vindictive. If, for example, Tomten felt that the farmer was mistreating his livestock, heard swearing in the barn, or neglecting to clean up a mess, he would become incensed and cause mischief. Items around the house were found broken, the milk curdled, even the cows’ tails tied together. Tomtar also became angered and would seek revenge if they were seen or if the farmer and his family failed to leave a bowl of porridge and butter out for him on Christmas Eve. My grandmother and her family used to follow this tradition, leaving out porridge with butter for Tomten each Christmas Eve.

My grandmother was quite insistent that the Tomtarna were not merely the stuff of fairytale and legend, but real beings that occupied the farms and rural landscapes of Sweden. It was these stories that contributed to my lifelong fascination with tales of diminutive humanoids. Originally coming out of the pagan traditions regarding “earth spirits” and the worship of the natural world, Tomtarna later became associated with ungodly or heathen beliefs after the Christianization of Scandinavia. However, despite the sometimes negative association, they have remained a popular figure in Swedish folklore.

Pedro Mountain Mummy - 14" high

Obviously, the more familiar correlative is the Gnome, of which their are purportedly a great many variations and go by many names, including Erdmanleins (Germany), Nains (Britain), Nisse or Nissen (Norway and also Sweden), Tontti (Finland), Dudje (Bulgaria and Albania), and others. Not surprisingly, legends of little people are found not only in Europe, but throughout the world.

In North America the Native American people speak of “little feet” or “baby feet” that often inhabit mountainous regions or dwell underground. These beings are also said to have various magical and psychic powers, including the power of invisibility and to mentally confuse any human foolish enough to pursue them. Encounters with these entities are also associated with memory loss and periods of missing time, much akin to the reports that we hear in relation to the UFO/alien abduction phenomena (a subject that I’ll save for another post). An excellent article on Native American lore concerning little people or babyfeet in North America can be found on Dr. Karl Shuker’s blog.

In 1932, gold prospectors Cecil Main and Frank Carr, blasting open the walls of a gulch in the Pedro Mountains of Wyoming, discovered a cavern that had been sealed behind a wall of rock. Within the cavern sat, cross-legged, a small, wizened figure no more than 14″ high. The tiny manneken was naturally preserved and mummified, having been spared from the elements because of that fact that it was sealed within the cave. The creature was removed from the cavern and later examined and underwent an x-ray analysis by Dr. Henry Shapiro of the American Museum of Natural History. The fact that the little man sported a full set of teeth and a fully-fused skull dispelled any possibility of the small humanoid being an infant. Interestingly, the Shoshone people told of the Nimerigar, a small, aggressive people who occupied that region of Wyoming. The Nimerigar were supposed to have hunted with bows and poison arrows and lived in the Wind River and Pedro Mountains.

I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself - underpants gnomes

Personally, the question that I most frequently ponder is “are accounts of these creatures merely folklore, or are they based in truth?” I imagine that posing this question would be much more quickly dismissed prior to 2004’s discovery of Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores. These diminutive humanoids, which have become known as “hobbits”, appears to be a separate species of human that only grew about a meter tall. The bones found are believed to be as young as 13,000 years old, demonstrating that this tiny human lived at the same time as modern Homo sapiens. If a distinctly different version of humanoid existed alongside modern humans, I believe that we must entertain the idea that other such diminutive humanoids may have lived elsewhere throughout the world.

In South America many of the native people speak of the Duende, a race of small goblin- or gnome-like creatures that make their home in the surrounding forests and mountains. Recently, a video of a small, pointy-hatted being in Argentina surfaced on the Internet. The creature, if it is a fake, is a convincing one. It shuffles out of some high grass with a strange sideways gait, into a road as a group of teenagers returning from a fishing trip lounge nearby. The boys seem genuinely startled, judging from the scream that escapes one of them as the being appears (the version with the original audio in which the boy screams can be found on YouTube).

The video, of course, is so outlandish that it has been dismissed by most who have seen it, but coming from a graphics background I’m of the opinion that this creature is not a CGI creation, and it certainly seems to be quite diminutive — of proportions that you might only see from a person who suffers from primordial dwarfism, an exceedingly rare condition. His hat barely clears the high grass out of which it shuffles. I’ve posted it below for the readers to judge for themselves.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, is it possible that little people once existed, or do currently exist? If so, are they flesh-and-blood beings such as ourselves, simply an undiscovered race of creatures that has cleverly hidden themselves from us? Or, are they something more than that? Are they of an interdimensional or paranormal nature? Folklore has consistently described them as having magical gifts and properties, but is that nothing more than myth and fairytale?

As the newer developments in quantum physics point us to a different view of the nature of reality, that we exist not in a Universe, but a Multiverse, is it possible that there might be beings that can traverse these different planes of existence, moving between our reality and others? What connection, if any, have reports of these creatures in a paranormal context have to do with the modern reports of alien abductions and missing time experiences? This is an area which I personally find fascinating and will revisit frequently in the course of my writing on this blog. Meanwhile, I encourage anyone who has an opinion about such matters to comment on this article.

Here’s another tomtar-related article that came to my attention, by blog author Jack Hunter:
http://discarnates.blogspot.com/2009/09/sweden-trolls-tomtar.html

Cryptid Hunter Adam Davies in Mongolia

This Sunday, October 25 at 9 PM EST, the History Channel’s popular MonsterQuest will air their long-awaited episode about Adam Davies’ and Dr. Ian Redmond’s journey to the Himalayas in search of the Abominable Snowman.

From the History Channel MonsterQuest site:

“The Abominable Snowman is among the most frightening and notorious monsters in history. This ferocious nocturnal creature is said to attack people and slaughter their animals. Witnesses report sightings of a strange, hair-covered beast and claim to have heard blood-curdling screams. Evidence amassed over the last century may point to a startling conclusion: that something real and unknown stalks the desolate mountains of the Far East. Scientists and experts will examine the clues while the MonsterQuest team will undertake their most dangerous expedition to date with an epic ascent onto the snowy peaks where recent evidence of the beast was found.”

I was in touch with Adam recently and hope to speak with him soon about his Himalayan expedition, as well as his recent Sumatran expedition in search of the elusive Orang Pendek. You can visit him on the web at www.extreme-expeditions.com.

Anne Joyce (Sciortino) Carlson, 1927 - 2009

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the major reasons why I’ve had an ongoing interest in the unexplained since childhood was because of my mother. My mom was a person of great humor, and it was rare that she was not smiling, laughing and joking about something. For a small person (I get my size from my dad’s side), she made a big impression on everyone she met and people naturally gravitated toward her.

My mom was a woman of many talents. She was was a nurse, having graduated near the top of her class from Long Island University in Brooklyn in 1947. She spent most of her career in pediatrics because she loved infants and children, and she frequently bandaged cut knees and scrapes for most of the neighborhood kids. Her cooking talents were legendary, and she was often the first one that people turned to with their troubles, always having a willing ear and a kind word of encouragement to help ease the sorrows of others. She and my father, Harold, married in July of 1949, just short of sixty years, until her passing this year.

Although hardly a sanctimonious or pious person, my mom was a deeply religious woman, having been raised in an devoutly Catholic Italian family. Having such a background, she did believe in the fact that God spoke to her at times through her dreams, and she often laughingly referred to herself as “a witch”, primarily because of her incredible sense of intuition and her frequent precognitive (or as she called them, “witchy”) dreams.

Her gifts were not always welcomed, and my mother would honestly worry for someone if she’d had one of her “witchy dreams” about them. This was not unwarranted, because her accuracy was uncanny. The most vivid and upsetting example of her precognitive powers happened during the summer of 1975, shortly before my eleventh birthday. My mom was having persistent and very upsetting dreams involving her mother, who’d been deceased for about two years at that time, and her two brothers-in-law, my uncles.

My mother was the sixth of seven children, first generation American-born to Sicilian parents. She, like my father, was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and many of our relatives lived there. Her younger sister and her eldest lived next door to each other in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, my elder aunt being married to a physician, aged sixty-five. Her younger sister was forty-five years of age and her husband was forty-six. In the early morning hours of July 4th, 1975, the elder sister, Jane, called next door to her younger sister and brother-in-law to say that her husband was having a heart attack. Naturally, my aunt and uncle went next door and as my younger uncle was calling an ambulance, he too suffered massive cardiac arrest. Both my older uncle and younger uncle died within minutes of each other in the same house.

A horrible and bizarre tragedy indeed, the effects from which our family has never fully recovered. The strangest part, however, was the fact that my mother had been experiencing a feeling of foreboding and increasingly dark, disturbing dreams involving my uncles in the weeks and days leading up to their deaths. She spoke of having vivid nightmares of her two brothers-in-law struggling and drowning in black, churning water as her mother stood at the shore. In the dream, my mother would run up to the edge of the water, wanting to help her sisters’ husbands, but was told by her mother that it was “too late to save them”. She would then watch helplessly as the black waters eventually engulfed them.

On the morning of July 4th, 1975 at approximately 4 AM, my mother awoke in a cold sweat with her heart pounding. She later learned that this was at approximately this time that her younger sister’s husband passed away. After their deaths my mother had a more pleasant dream of my uncles and grandmother seemingly at peace and smiling at her.

These were the most memorable and upsetting of my mother’s many precognitive dreams, but she experienced them frequently throughout her life. Sometimes they were fairly innocuous, involving mundane events, but as friends and neighbors came to know of her abilities they often consulted with her about her dreams or feelings concerning various matters. And her instincts were usually correct.

On another occasion, about ten years ago and a few years after Jane, the eldest of her five older siblings, had passed away, my mother was in her bedroom folding and putting away some clothes in her dresser. Suddenly, my aunt Jane appeared, sitting on the edge of her bed. In a stern and commanding voice, unlike my sweet Auntie Jane, she told my mother to call their brother, saying “Buddy’s in trouble and he needs you!” At that, aunt Jane vanished. Within a minute or so, before my mother was able to compose herself and call her brother as she was told, the phone rang. My mother answered and it was in fact, my uncle. “How are you?” my mother asked. “Not too good” replied my uncle. As it turned out, his daughter had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. My uncle’s wife had passed away several years earlier, also from breast cancer, so this was naturally even that much more upsetting to him.

The good news is, my cousin’s tumor was removed and over ten years later she has been cancer-free. The strangeness of these incidents, though, has had a lasting effect on my view of reality. Why are some people, like my mother, more “in-tune” to the unseen and appear to have the ability to tap into events that have not yet occurred? And what is the true nature of precognitive dreams and clairvoyance? The answer may lie in the field of quantum physics. In Lynn McTaggart’s excellent book The Field, she coins the phrase “The Endless Hear and Now” — the fact that human consciousness is inexorably linked to the basic fabric of reality, the zero point field, a timeless and all-encompassing field of consciousness. This concept, once relegated as New Age nonsense by “serious” scientists, is now being advanced by some of the most brilliant minds working at the cutting edge of quantum physics. At this level, they tell us, we are all linked, and past and present becomes meaningless. So then, is it possible that some individuals have an innate ability to access this field?

Admittedly, these are difficult concepts to get one’s head around, and as Richard Feynman once famously remarked, anyone who claims to understand quantum physics is “a liar or a fool”. Readers of this website will find that the intersection of new science, quantum physics, and the paranormal/mystical is a central concept to many of my articles. I am, of course, not a scientist or researcher. I’m just a person who finds all of this fascinating and who is an avid reader of all materials concerning these subjects, and I look forward to encouraging a discussion with readers of this blog about such matters. My feeling is that there’s far too much empirical evidence to simply dismiss all such experiences as my mother had, and if it cannot be dismissed, then we must address their true nature and origin.

In conclusion, I must say that I miss my mother more than words can even begin to express. I don’t know of a more wonderful person that ever I’ve met, and I don’t say that simply because she was my mom and was dear to me. She was truly remarkable, and wise beyond reasoning. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have great love for my friends and family, and I am scrupulously honest, and I take great offense to those who say otherwise, as I feel that is an affront to both myself and my parents. I love my mother and take pride in knowing that all which is good and decent about myself comes from her and my father.

Extreme Expeditions by Adam Davies

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Adam Davies on two occasions while co-hosting the old Internet radio show The Paranomalists, which some of you who are reading this may remember. It was one of those rare times that I’d actually read our guest’s book in its entirety before the interview, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Adam was, without question, my favorite guest of all the many wonderful authors and researchers with whom we had the privilege of speaking. Perhaps because Adam is a genial, good-humored guy like myself who works a 9-5 job during the day and enjoys a few pints at the pub a couple of nights a weeks, I felt I could relate to him on a level that I didn’t always with some of our other guests, as much as I may have enjoyed speaking with them.

However, the similarities between us end there. While I retreat to the safety and comfort of my home office to simply write about those things which I find interesting, Mr. Davies, when he is not working at his job in his native England, devotes himself to the search for the mystery animals of this world. This passion for the discovery of undiscovered species, or cryptids, has led him to such far-flung places as the Congolese jungles in pursuit of the legendary mokele-mbembe (a sauropod-type dinosaur reported to be seen in the swamps and rivers of the area) to Sumatra — on several occasions — in search of the orang pendek, an upright-walking ape or hominid that has been seen in the area numerous times by the native inhabitants of the jungle.

Adam has also been to Mongolia in search of the legendary “death worm”, Loch Ness (a much shorter trip, at least, from his home in Manchester), and to Lake Seljord in Norway in search of the Seljord Serpent, an aquatic beast that reportedly inhabits that lake. Since the writing of Extreme Expeditions he’s been on several other journeys, including Russia, in search of the apelike Almas; the Himalayas in search of the elusive Yeti; and again most recently to Sumatra, where he has gathered his most compelling data yet for the confirmation of the existence of the orang pendek. I should mention that all of these expeditions have been made at his own personal time and expense, and frequently (usually) involve quite a bit of risk of personal injury. In fact, Adam was recently hospitalized for a severe case of dysentery that he contracted on his Sumatran expedition.

Besides being enormously entertaining and frequently riotously funny, Extreme Expeditions is, I felt, a very moving account of a man that is motivated by both a fascination for these creatures and a deep concern for their safety and preservation. I came away from reading Adam’s book with true respect for the his sense of purpose and sheer determination. The logistics alone involved in traveling to and through an area like the Congolese jungles or the Mongolian desert would be enough to stop me in my tracks. Once there, however, Adam and his crew have faced all manner of danger and hardship. It’s a rare opportunity and privilege to meet someone who consistently puts himself in harm’s way to pursue his passion, and I finished Extreme Expeditions with a true admiration for Adam Davies.

Regardless of whether you have a belief or interest in the mysterious and legendary creatures of the world, Adam Davies’ Extreme Expeditions is simply a wonderfully entertaining travel diary that can be easily enjoyed by all audiences (over 18! — it’s somewhat explicit in parts). Extreme Expeditions is published by Anomalist Books and can be ordered through their website.

Peeping bigfoot or guy in a gorilla mask?

In June of this year I emailed famed West Coast psychic Nancy Bradley (www.nancybradley.org) after reading a very interesting account of a bigfoot encounter that she had as a girl while vacationing at her family’s summer cabin in Lake Owassa, NJ. For those of you who are unfamiliar with New Jersey, or who’s only familiarity with the Garden State is driving past the reeking factories along the northern stretch of the NJ Turnpike while passing through, you might be surprised to know that much of the fifth smallest state (and most highly populated per square mile) contains many miles of woodland and farms. The densely forested Pinelands in south Jersey actually covers about 1.1 million acres.

My family and I happen to live in the more populated and congested area of northeastern New Jersey, about 20 miles outside of New York City, but western NJ as you near Pennsylvania is another very rural and wooded part of the state, and this is where Ms. Bradley’s tale takes place. If you’d like to read her original article, here’s the link: www.trueghosttales.com/paranormal/bigfoot-of-lake-owassa-new-jersey). In my email to Ms. Bradley, I told her that I enjoyed her article very much and that my wife, Debbie, had a strange experience while in that part of the state a couple of years ago. Here is Debbie’s story as I recounted it to Ms. Bradley:

We live in the northeastern part of the state, not far from NYC. I’m a website designer and my wife, Debbie, teaches special education. Each June she accompanies her seventh grade class for a 3-day outing at Stokes State Forest, which is in Sussex County and pretty close to Lake Owassa. Well, one night one of the students staying in the same cabin as Debbie had a severe asthma attack. The girl’s parents didn’t bother to notify the school about her condition and neglected to pack her inhaler, so my wife ran out of the cabin at about 3 AM and proceeded to cross the compound to the infirmary where the nurse slept. As she ran toward the nurse’s station she heard an awful yowling/screeching noise. It was high-pitched and very loud, and unlike anything she’d ever heard before. It frightened her greatly. She did what she had to do, however, and alerted the nurse about the young girl’s condition and an ambulance was called (the girl recovered, fortunately).

The horrible screeching and yowling continued for several minutes after Debbie arrived at the nurse’s station, and when a police officer arrived alongside the ambulance, my wife described the horrible sounds that she just heard and asked the office if he’d heard them or if anyone had reported them. He looked at her and said in a very serious tone, “there have been a lot of bigfoot reports in the area over the last few nights”. After my wife told me this, I began doing some research and found a surprisingly large number of bigfoot reports in New Jersey. I had always associated bigfoot sightings with the Pacific Northwest and certainly wouldn’t have thought there would be any similar reports in such a highly populated state as ours, but apparently people in the more rural northwestern part of New Jersey are familiar with these sightings. In this part of New Jersey the sightings are frequent enough to have garnered the big furry fellow a nick-name of “Big Red Eye”.  This is because witnesses often describe the creature as having glowing red eyes (not sure if this is specific to New Jersey sightings, as I don’t recall hearing about this trait having been reported elsewhere). Weird NJ has an article about Big Red Eye that you might want to check out here.

In the course of my research I also came across a couple of websites that had audio recordings of what was thought to be bigfoot vocalizations, and when I played them for Debbie she remarked that  that was exactly what it sounded like. Recently, the Discovery Channel aired the excellent “Bigfoot: Where Legend Meets Science” and at one point they played an audio recording that was supposedly from a sasquatch, and again my wife said that what she’d heard sounded just like that.

I just thought I’d share that experience, even though it wasn’t exactly firsthand. My wife is very level-headed and not much of a believer in anything paranormal or out of the ordinary, so I was impressed by the fact that she was so shaken by this and that she would even entertain the idea that it could have been bigfoot.

Ms. Bradley was kind enough to respond to my email and even went so far as to invite my wife and me to explore the area around Lake Owassa with her and her husband when they visit New Jersey next year. Obviously, I said “yes” to that immediately, but my wife’s response when I told her of Nancy’s offer was predictable: “No way”, she said. Debbie does not share my interest in the unexplained and was sufficiently shaken by the experience that she has no desire to seek out whatever it was that was source of those unearthly screams. I’ll post an article after I explore the area around Lake Owassa with Nancy and her husband, and let you know if there was anything interesting to be found.

If you live in New Jersey and have had a bigfoot encounter, I’d love to hear about it. Also, you may want to report your experience to Drew Vics’ New Jersey Bigfoot Reporting Center.